Cultural Challenges Facing Military Operations in Pan Arab States
For this assignment the cultural manifestations I selected to discuss as being important to our Unit’s success are Wasta, Deference to authority, and Tendency to seek compromise. Of course understanding all of the cultural manifestations are important to our unit’s success, but each region within the Middle East-North African (MENA) region will have their own variations based upon which branch of Islam is dominant in the region, what that region’s experience has been with the U.S. or a Western presence in general and numerous other factors such as the prevailing socio-economic factors of the region.
By way of back ground, I thought it would be helpful to point out that the MENA region is a pretty diverse area comprised of “have’s” and “have nots”. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are heavily vested in the region as they see the entire region as an emerging market with a gold mine of potential. The World Bank describes the region as “… an economically diverse region that includes both the oil-rich economies in the Gulf and countries that are resource-scarce in relation to population, such as Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen. The region’s economic fortunes over much of the past quarter century have been heavily influenced by two factors – the price of oil and the legacy of economic policies and structures that had emphasized a leading role for the state.” The World Bank’s home page cites a statistic that says that “With about 23 percent of the 300 million people in the Middle East and North Africa living on less than $2 a day, empowering poor people constitutes an important strategy for fighting poverty”. And I would submit that it is an important strategy for winning the hearts and minds of the locals as well.
For the purposes of this scenario I elected to choose a specific location within MENA, and that is the “resource scarce” region of Yemen. While we do not currently have boots on the ground in Yemen, recent events have shown that it is a
By way of back ground, I thought it would be helpful to point out that the MENA region is a pretty diverse area comprised of “have’s” and “have nots”. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are heavily vested in the region as they see the entire region as an emerging market with a gold mine of potential. The World Bank describes the region as “… an economically diverse region that includes both the oil-rich economies in the Gulf and countries that are resource-scarce in relation to population, such as Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen. The region’s economic fortunes over much of the past quarter century have been heavily influenced by two factors – the price of oil and the legacy of economic policies and structures that had emphasized a leading role for the state.” The World Bank’s home page cites a statistic that says that “With about 23 percent of the 300 million people in the Middle East and North Africa living on less than $2 a day, empowering poor people constitutes an important strategy for fighting poverty”. And I would submit that it is an important strategy for winning the hearts and minds of the locals as well.
For the purposes of this scenario I elected to choose a specific location within MENA, and that is the “resource scarce” region of Yemen. While we do not currently have boots on the ground in Yemen, recent events have shown that it is a